Early Audition: Molly Joyce, Shapeshifter

Photograph: Nir Arieli

Our friends at New Amsterdam Records have given us the opportunity to share a number of exclusive album previews in recent months. Today we’ve got something different to offer along with NewAm: our first video premiere, for the Molly Joyce composition Shapeshifter. Performed by the Dutch duo of violinist Monica Germino and sound engineer Frank van der Weij, the piece is one of two works included on Joyce’s new digital EP, Lean Back and Release.

You might recall that Joyce, a composer and performer who studied with Samuel Adler and Christopher Rouse at the Juilliard School and currently is enrolled at the Yale School of Music, had a piece featured on A O R T A, the recent New Amsterdam release by pianist Vicky Chow. About Shapeshifter, she says:

“Shapeshifter is a work inspired and motivated by physical change and its many implications. When I originally wrote it for the violin and engineer duo of Monica Germino and Frank van der Weij, I was aiming for the violin to gradually ‘shape-shift’ to a new and divergent sound. Thus the video to accompany excerpts of the work utilizes projection mapping and more to distort the actress’s appearance and propel her to a new physical image.”

Monica Germino
Photograph: Elisabeth Melchior

The video was shot and edited by Kevin Eikenberg of Four/Ten Media. Along with Shapeshifter, Joyce’s new EP features a second transformational piece, Lean Back and Release, which was given a memorable professional premiere by Adriana Mateo at the 2014 Bang on a Can Marathon.

Lean Back and Release is available now via the Bandcamp player embedded above. Joyce and New Amsterdam will celebrate the release of the EP and video on March 6 at 6:30pm with a free concert featuring violinist Kristin Lee, concertmaster of the Metropolis Ensemble, at 1 Rivington Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side; to RSVP, go here.

Further Reading

Cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, who performs nightly in the Stone series at the New School Feb. 19-23, talks with Olivia Giovetti about improvisation as conversation, and choosing to focus on meaningful work.

For musicians of older generations, to watch Face the Music handle improvisation-based works by black female composers at National Sawdust on Feb. 11 was to attempt to mute one's envy, critic and musician Jennifer Gersten asserts.

PUBLIQuartet cellist Amanda Gookin chats with Amanda Angel about "Freedom and Faith," the group’s second album, which it will showcase on Feb. 10 as part of a season-long residency at National Sawdust.